Ask most teams how they measure developer productivity, and you’ll likely hear the usual suspects: lines of code, features shipped, sprint goals met. But those metrics don’t tell the whole story. Behind that visible progress is a quieter problem, one that doesn’t show up in dashboards or JIRA boards.
According to Lokalise’s Developer Delay Report[1] , technical issues are quietly eating into developers’ time, energy, and focus. And while the impact might not be obvious at first glance, it adds up fast, and gets expensive even faster.
The Hidden Time Suck Developers Deal With Every Week
Everyone knows bugs happen. Downtime? Sure, that’s part of the game. But what Lokalise found is that these “expected” disruptions aren’t rare exceptions, they’re a regular part of the work week for most developers.
Their survey of 500 U.S. devs found that engineers lose an average of three hours per week to avoidable issues, stuff like broken tools, flaky workflows, or missing documentation. That may not seem outrageous in isolation, but when you do the math, it stings: that’s about 20 full workdays per year, per developer.
Now tie that to a salary. If a developer earns $100,000 annually, those 20 days of lost productivity equate to around $8,000 flushed away per person. For a 10-person team, that’s $80,000. For a team of 100, you’re burning close to a million dollars a year on technical friction alone.
The top culprits?
- Software bugs and glitches (55%)
- Downtime from platforms or services (47%)
- Incomplete or bad documentation (35%)
- Tool integration problems (24%)
- Slow code reviews (23%)
What’s striking is how persistent these issues are. It’s not that teams are unprepared, it’s that the issues are baked into the day-to-day experience.
Workarounds Are Just More Work
When something breaks, developers don’t usually wait around. They get scrappy. According to the report, 60% of them say they build their own workarounds. That might sound resourceful, but it just kicks the problem down the road. Nearly all of those devs then spend about an hour a week maintaining those fixes, patches that were never meant to last.
That’s more time lost. More mental energy spent on duct tape instead of delivery.
And then there’s AI. With all the buzz around generative tools, many devs have turned to AI for help. But 42% say AI tools actually slowed them down instead of speeding things up.
Why? Because context matters. AI-generated code often misses the bigger picture, it’s missing the nuance, the architecture, the naming conventions, the edge cases. So now the team spends extra time reviewing and rewriting what the bot suggested. You’ve swapped one bottleneck for another.
Even when AI-generated output is decent, it’s uneven. Junior developers may lean on it too much, skipping the deeper thinking behind the code. Senior engineers end up cleaning up the mess. And so begins another feedback loop of inefficiency.
When Developers Become Support Staff
It’s bad enough when your own tools break. It’s worse when you’re constantly fixing someone else’s.
According to Lokalise, 61% of developers regularly get pulled into tech support roles that aren’t part of their job. In some cases, the time they spend helping others rivals what they spend fixing their own blockers.
Common support tasks developers get dragged into:
- Troubleshooting network or connectivity issues (48%)
- Explaining workflows and documentation (39%)
- Resolving permissions or access issues (35%)
- Setting up or configuring tools (34%)
- Helping others with local environment setup (24%)
These issues are fixable with better documentation, better training, or clearer systems, but instead, they fall on devs already swamped with their own priorities.
Only 16% of developers said they were given proper resources to handle these support asks. One in three got nothing at all. No training. No documentation. Just figure it out and move on.
It’s no surprise that 66% said this extra support work hurts their focus. Nearly half (47%) said they hold off on asking for help themselves, just to avoid looking like they’re not competent.
That’s a culture problem, and a big one. Developers working under pressure, juggling support and delivery, and avoiding help for fear of judgment? That’s how you lose people.
Delays Aren’t Just Common, They’re Costly
Almost half of developers (44%) say they’ve missed a deadline in the past year because of tech-related issues. And these aren’t small blips.
Here’s how much time a single issue can eat up:
- 30% lost 1–3 hours
- 29% lost half a workday
- 18% lost an entire day
- 11% lost 2–3 days
- 1% lost a full week, or more
That kind of disruption derails everything. Sprints slip. Dependencies pile up. Product launches push back. It’s not just one person missing a target, it’s entire teams scrambling to re-align.
Then you start rushing. You skip proper testing. You delay writing documentation. You half-fix bugs. And suddenly you’ve created more of the same mess that caused the delays in the first place.
It’s a vicious cycle. And companies that don’t actively manage it pay for it twice, first in lost time, then in tech debt.
Regional Patterns Reveal Deeper Gaps
Lokalise also pulled Google Trends data to see where developers are searching for help the most. The results showed clear differences across states.
Top states for dev troubleshooting searches (per capita):
- Washington
- Vermont
- Massachusetts
Bottom states:
- Mississippi
- Louisiana
- Alabama
The most-searched terms?
- “segmentation fault”
- “git revert merge”
- “Python TypeError”
- “nginx 502 bad gateway”
- “macOS kernel panic”
- “JavaScript undefined”
It’s not just Silicon Valley dealing with cryptic error messages. Developers across the country are hitting the same walls. The difference is, some have better systems in place to fix them, and some are left Googling in the dark.
And in lower-search states, the numbers might reflect something else entirely: less visibility into problems, or fewer support structures to surface them in the first place.
Developers Are Piecing Together Help
When devs get stuck, they don’t go to internal IT. Most of the time, they’re on their own.
Here’s how developers look for help:
- 41% use a mix of forums, AI, and internal docs
- 25% turn to public forums like Stack Overflow
- 19% rely on AI tools
- 15% use internal documentation or team support
The result? A fragmented, inconsistent support ecosystem.
You end up with devs bouncing from Reddit to ChatGPT to Slack, cross-referencing answers, and guessing what’ll break the least. That’s not a system, it’s a scavenger hunt.
Worse, companies often treat this DIY support as a strength. But it’s not. It’s a failure of internal systems to give developers what they need.
Senior engineers become the default knowledge base. Junior devs fall behind. Knowledge becomes tribal, siloed, and fragile.
What Engineering Leaders Should Actually Do
If you’re leading a team, or a company, and you think this doesn’t apply to you, think again.
This isn’t a niche frustration. It’s a widespread, structural problem. And fixing it isn’t just about morale, it’s about money.
To make progress, teams need:
- Reliable tools that don’t break the flow
- Smooth integrations across the stack
- Simple, intuitive UX for faster ramp-up
- Real documentation that’s actually helpful
- Fast, human support when things go sideways
But tooling is just the start. Leadership needs to dig deeper.
- Run regular workflow reviews
- Identify friction points before they become culture problems
- Encourage help-seeking, not silence
- Build documentation into dev workflows
- Track internal issues like product bugs
- Rotate support roles so the burden is shared
- Budget time and headcount for cleaning up tech debt
- Set internal SLAs for support, not just for customers
Final Thought: Friction Is the Silent Killer
Your developers aren’t just writing code. They’re context-switching, firefighting, fixing documentation, building bandaids, and cleaning up after AI.
They’re wasting hours not because they’re slow, but because the system is.
And that’s the part most companies miss: developer friction isn’t just annoying, it’s expensive.
If you want your team to move fast, ship confidently, and actually enjoy their work, start by removing the stuff that’s slowing them down.
Read next: The Truth About Dopamine Detoxes: Can You Really Reset Your Brain?[2]
References
- ^ Lokalise’s Developer Delay Report (lokalise.com)
- ^ The Truth About Dopamine Detoxes: Can You Really Reset Your Brain? (www.digitalinformationworld.com)